THE events of Drumcree drove many southern Church of Ireland members "to say this isn't the church I belong to", the Bishop of Meath and Kildare has said.
"The events in Drumcree in July added to the pain and depression of church members, both north and south," Dr Richard Clarke said. "All that we could grasp was a bewildering picture of a culture with which we simply could not identify."
Addressing the Diocesan Synod of Meath and Kildare at Multyfarnham, Co Westmeath, on Saturday, Dr Clarke said: "We would be failing as thinking Christians if we were simply to condemn and to dissociate ourselves from something probably beyond our comprehension.
He pointed out that each member of the Church of Ireland came "from a context" including upbringing, family connections and social and geographical settings. "The danger for any of us comes when our context becomes more important to us than the church itself," he said.
Many Church of Ireland members "had felt an acute pain as the supposed peace process in Northern Ireland first lost its momentum, and then began to disintegrate into mutual suspicion and violence", he said.
Dr Clarke said Southern members "had a different feel of the church than they would have if members lived in, for example, Rio de Janeiro or San Francisco, or Cape Town, or other parts of the island."
On the future of the peace process, Dr Clarke said every statement and action should be judged on how it related to "the cross".
As Christians, the first loyalty of Church of Ireland members is "not to a flag but to a cross", he said.
Dr Clarke said nobody could "feel smugly disengaged from the underlying process which leads to a Drumcree". He said many church members in the Republic had their own "baggage - the social and tribal background and assumptions from which members emerged".
"Too much attachment" to the "power of holding the purse strings for a parish or diocese, or an immense loyalty to the local parish" could come between people and true membership of the "Cross of Christ".
"As we try to think our way forwards and I hope, pray our way forwards in this country in its present tension, let it be in an attitude of openness but also of penitence", he said.
He called on everybody involved in the peace process to consider whether a certain action had "more to do with a flag, a political flag, a national flag, a social flag, a tribal flag, or even the flag of the Church of Ireland".